astroengine writes: "Decades of searching and a 7.5 billion Euro particle accelerator later, why is everyone so down on one of the biggest discoveries of the century? Well, as the evidence strengthens for a bona fide signal of a "Standard Model" Higgs boson with a mass of 125 GeV, many scientists are disappointed that the discovery of an "ordinary" — or "vanilla" according to Caltech cosmologist Sean Carroll — Higgs removes any doubt for more exotic physics beyond the Standard Model. It's a strange juxtaposition; a profound discovery that's also an anticlimax. But to confirm the identity of the Higgs candidate, LHC physicists still need to measure the particle's spin. “Until we can confidently tie down the particle’s spin,” said CERN Research Director Sergio Bertolucci at this week's Rencontres de Moriond conference in Italy, “the particle will remain Higgs-like. Only when we know that is has spin-zero will we be able to call it a Higgs.”"Link to Original Source